Virtualisation

One of the growth areas of business technology recently has been in server virtualisation.  In simple terms, server virtualisation creates a virtual server, so instead of the server hardware being tied to only one operating system and set of applications at a time it can run multiple virtual servers on the same hardware at the same time.  This could mean you are running Windows 2003 Server, Windows 2000 Server, and Linux all on the same box, or it could be all the same operating system but instead of separate hardware servers for different applications, they could all run on the same piece of hardware, just in virtualised environments.

This allows greater adaptability for an organisation as new applications can be tested and launched more rapidly.  With the growth in use of virtualisation many organisations can reduce their server numbers by running multiple servers on the same hardware. While virtualisation is not suited to all situations many businesses can implement this in part, which can reduce your hardware usage and save power. In fact virtualisation technology now has the capacity to switch off some servers when they are not being utilised and to direct the users to another server, bringing the downed server back on when the demand increases – this reduces the power consumption of hardware at times when it is not being needed.

Benefits of Virtualisation 

  • Minimise downtime and IT service disruption while eliminating the need for dedicated stand-by hardware and installation of additional software.
  • Provide uniform high availability / business continuity across the entire virtualised IT environment without the cost and complexity of failover solutions tied to either operating systems or specific applications.
  • Automatic detection of server failures. Automate the monitoring of physical server availability. HA detects server failures and initiates the virtual machine migration without any human intervention.
  • Resource checks. Ensure that capacity is always available in order to restart all virtual machines affected by server failure. HA continuously monitors capacity utilisation and “reserves” spare capacity to be able to restart virtual machines.
  • Hardware independent.  Unlike standard "Clustering" solutions which are hardware dependant, VMWare virtual environments are hardware independent, enabling clients to use a mix of hardware technologies (brands, specifications etc.) within the server resource pool environment.

 

Contact us today to discuss a Virtualisation solution for you and your business.